USC's STARFISH soft robot walks slowly across a lab bench

What happened

The prototype uses heat-activated metal wires inside flexible tentacles to bend its limbs. The team reports developing a multidirectional tentacle, adding position sensing and testing a learned control method. It is studying ways to grip surfaces in low gravity, but has not demonstrated STARFISH in space or on an asteroid.

Why it matters

The bench test moves a proposed space-inspection concept into hardware. Proposed satellite repair, asteroid exploration and multi-robot missions remain future aims; the reported result is a slow-moving lab prototype.

Source checked October 31, 2026. Status describes the evidence in the linked source at the time of review.